Rest in Peace, Campbell Ridgeback McKeown

Yesterday Campbell, my big Rhodesian Ridgeback, Jonathan's beloved first ever dog and the little puppy we hand-picked from a litter six months after we got married in 2003, passed away due to what appeared to have been a heart attack.

And I've realised something. That terrible sense of de-personalisation I experienced at the end of 2010, where I wasn't sure if I was awake or asleep while I was driving my car, where I felt a wash of both hot and cold adrenalin sweep through me and stop me breathing for a moment, leaving me shaking; that sense I had of trying to remember something ... the feeling so much that of a memory trying to break through, something that I should know but which was hidden from me.

Since yesterday it has been happening again. When I think of Cam's early years, when I remember how just last week he played with his doggy friend Tess in Bots and the wide happy smile on his face, when I look at his pink Eukanuba water bowl and remember that he won it in a lucky draw at puppy school... all these things cause that same hot and cold sweep of emotion through me. This time, though, I recognise it as grief. Cam's death has given me a name for that feeling, and allowed to me say to myself that, last year, that is what it was that I was trying to identify. It was grief. Nothing yet had been openly said by either Jon or I about everything ending, but I must have known it had, because the grief broke through the protective shell and swamped me then, terrifying me, sending me to the doctor for medication, to the therapist for emergency counselling.

So this is not just about the loss of my dear old dog. After all, all things considered, he had a happy life. He had a Mommy and a Daddy who loved him dearly. He spent the first six months of his life with a full-time Dad and leader of his pack, as Jon wasn't yet legally able to work in South Africa. He went to puppy school and for long walks every day. He had grandparents who loved him, and a beach house to visit where he ran on the endless sands and loved every minute. He slept at the foot of a bed  for all bar a few months of his life. He ate the best food money can buy for dogs, and he had two little boys and two cats to be his friends. The last time I went away for a week with the boys, he had Angelena, whom he loved, come stay with him. His last illness wasn't long, and he was only in true distress for two hours, which is heartbreaking but not, in the greater scheme of things, too great a length of time.

So no, it's not just the loss of a dear companion and friend, it's not just that I remember him as a carefree puppy running on beaches and loving us with all his heart.

It's the loss of the marriage of which he was part, the loss of that happy, glorious beginning of something, that step into a new life that we had taken. It is the knowledge that there will be no more dogs for Jon and I, no further children between the two of us, no more homes that we share as a couple. It is the loss, brought to the fore again, of the life I thought I was going to live, the life I thought about so much before I undertook it, the loss of the old age I had pictured and wept over, where he and I would be old together, and how bittersweet that would be, knowing one of us would go first, and the other be left behind. Knowing that I made choices which made that life improbable and, now, impossible, makes it no less sad.

On a more mundane level, it is the loss, again, of all  my routines. I remember the panic when I realised that my life with its comforting routines was going to be wiped away. I couldn't imagine a life where Jon and I didn't sit down together and read the boys a bedtime story. Despite it being the only time (apart from the school runs) that we were together, I literally couldn't imagine losing it. I was clinging to that as the only shred left of a normality otherwise long long since gone.

Now it is the same again. There is no-one to get up and open the door for in the morning. Will I even bother opening the door or will it stay shut till afternoon, when the boys get home from school? There is no-one to say goodmorning to, and get an answering tail thump in return. There is no hopeful doggy face to ask if they want their breakfast. There is no reason to open the door at night, to breathe in the spring air and glimpse the moon while I wait for wees and poos to be done.

This may all sound ridiculous, but in a new life where my children are only here every other couple of nights, it had become a routine. And a routine is comfort. Its very sameness allows you to get on from one minute to the next of your life.

I'm grateful that Cam was here to form a new routine with me when my world ended earlier this year. It is a gift he left behind; I know I have faced a change like this before and I will do it again. In three months I will be moving, from this house which has never felt like a home, and then there will be, hopefully, the chance to really start over. So I will be grateful that I can recognise the grief now as it hits me, and I will relish and love my children as much as I always have, and I'll plod on, missing my old boy but remembering him and all the good times he both represented and was part of.

ETA: Jon has asked the SPCA to bury Campbell in his own plot, with a memorial plaque. I may never go up there, but I appreciate so much that he has done so.